One year of the pandemic in ‘Turkey’s Wuhan’

* İstanbul Medical Chamber

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"In late April 2020, when Minister of Health Dr. Fahrettin Koca defined İstanbul as 'Turkey's Wuhan, 60 percent of all cases were in İstanbul. The number of cases in İstanbul dropped below 10 percent of all cases in August. However, in autumn, it started to increase again. İstanbul was the capital of the pandemic more than once throughout the year."

İstanbul Medical Chamber (İTO) Executive Board has shared the findings of the "One Year of the Pandemic in İstanbul, the Wuhan of Turkey" report prepared by the İTO COVID-19 Monitoring Group.

'No equality in pandemic, either'

Taking the floor first, İTO Secretary General Prof. Osman Küçükosmanoğlu said that the "return to normal" process could not be managed, which led to an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.

Speaking after Küçükosmanoğlu, İTO COVID-19 Monitoring Board member Assoc. Prof. Esin Tuncay stated that "measures of lockdown must be urgently taken and vaccination must be done quickly."

İTO Executive Board Chair Prof. Pınar Saip also said, "Both the first case and the first death was seen in İstanbul. Pandemic is not equal, either. The lower the socioeconomic level of a neighborhood, the higher the number of deaths. If you have the opportunity to work at home and you are in a good financial situation, you live. It has been a year when workers and laborers have to work so that the wheels of the economy can keep turning. Healthcare workers, laborers have died more in this process."

'Stay home' to everyone, except for workers

Prof. Rukiye Eker Ömeroğlu, a member of the İTO Executive Board, shared the following figures at the press conference:

Annual number of deaths increased by almost 20 thousand

* According to the number of deaths announced by the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İMM) on a daily basis based on cemetery records, while the average number of deaths in a year was 74,030 in the five years before the pandemic, it increased to 92,583 in 2020.

Only 849,121 people received the second dose

* As of March 22, the total number of vaccines administered in İstanbul was 2,090,040 and the number of second doses was 849,121. Like Turkey, it is seen that a very few of the population has been vaccinated.

According to the official website of İstanbul Governor's Office, the population of İstanbul is 15,067,724, according to the 2018 census.

Health workers paid the price

* The hospitals of İstanbul were caught unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic to a large extent. Health workers and physicians, who have been made to work at the very forefront without even being provided with the necessary personal protective equipment, got sick and lost their lives as a result, have been the ones who have paid the heaviest price.

* What has happened in Turkey during the pandemic has once again shown how far the system of private hospitals, fostered and nurtured with public funding for years, is from meeting the needs of Turkey and how harmful it is for public health to abandon healthcare to the fierce market conditions with the policies of privatization.

Deaths of health workers: 31 percent in İstanbul

* 390 healthcare workers died of COVID-19 in Turkey in a year; 31 percent of these deaths occurred in İstanbul.

* In İstanbul, 74 healthcare workers in total lost their lives due to COVID-19; 29 of them were specialist physicians, eight of them were family physicians, six were workplace doctors, six were retired physicians, 49 were physicians and 25 were other health workers.

Workers were told 'Don't stay home'

* While everyone was called on to stay home during the outbreak, workers were told, "Wheels will turn, production will continue!"

So, even though it was first said, "SARS CoV-2 does not differentiate between rich and poor, it affects everyone in the same way", it has quickly turned into a disease of the working class." (AS/SD)